Fallout: New Vegas

So I need to get back into the swing of New Vegas. A combination of Dead Money and the fact I'm starting to fixate on getting the Fable Trilogy has kinda dulled my enthusiasm. oh i do this all the time.... I still love New Vegas but when something new comes along that I really want to play I almost always get distracted from whatever I was doing.

My point is, I need to start playing more of NV lest I lose interest completely.

And here I am at Old World Blues, and my interest is already peaked. This is certainly a very...different beginning than Dead Honey. Or even Honest Hearts. Much more whackiness, much less death or horror. I approve.

Of course I never did mention this, I was far too obsessed with hating on DM to focus on what it actually added to the story, but Christine did mention the other Courier and the fact he had visited the Big Empty. know his name is Ulysses now but that's all I know. Why does he appear to know me and why is he going to all these places? I'll meet him at the Divide as the epilogue slide of DM promised but just further compounds the question. I really want to know what the hell his deal is.

Also why there is an option to nuke the NCR or something. I've heard about that. I wonder what kind of nuke we're talking here... I will be interested to see that option.

See, talking about all this, reminding myself of the mysteries at hand, it's helping to rekindle my love for this game. Good times.

Man, Nightstalkers die pretty easy but they do some crazy damage if you don't kill them fast enough. Having to do those tests four times was a bit dumb, guys.

I am gaining levels like crazy. I just got all the crap for Dr. Klein. I went into OWB at Level 28 and now I'm Level 33. And this shit was pretty easy and quick.

Man I totally forgot about the Slayer Perk. It was pretty much the "essential" perk for Melee Builds from what I was told way back when i started NV but that was like 60 hours ago. I need to increase my Unarmed now. I had Speech, Melee, Energy and Medicine at 100 and Repair at 98 so I've just been dumping points into Barter. If I had remembered Slayer before now, I could have had it. Oh well.

Glad I got the Perk to see Enemy HP/DT though. It's how I knew how I was doing against the Giant Robo-Scorpion. I took it down, wasn't too hard.

So I was having a great chat with my brain when it got stuck in a conversation loop. When asked about all the things it would miss, it couldn't say anything besides remembering Bright and HELIOS One. It just kept repeating those two lines of dialogue forever.

In the end I decided to leave my Brain where it was. it seemed happier there so what's the harm.

I spared the Think Tank. They're a charming group of folks and as long as they don't get out, all should be well.

As the ending slides said, I rushed through things. I'm frankly glad this DLC was much shorter than DM. I had fun and it didn't overstay its welcome. I also got some nice loot and Caps out of it along with gaining an absurd amount of Levels.

Well, there is only one road left to me, as the ending slide said. It will be a lonesome one and apparently full of tough as nails enemies. And Ulysses. None of the DL Cs have offered much insight into him as far as I can discover. He's been here, he's been there, he's interested in me, and that is all I got. I want to know what his deal is. And if it relates to some part of "my" past that "I" don't even know about? That'll just be weird.

Man, you really didn't have much to say about OWB. No thoughts on the Think Tank? Morbius?

Well they're hilarious of course. The introduction to the Think Tank went on a bit too long but I loved them. Me and my many-penised feet.

Morbius was the best though. He basically was a cartoon villain. Listening to his hamtastic messages of doom as he unleashed his ROBO SCORPIONS upon me was the highlight of the whole DLC.

I didn't say much on this because "they're funny" is kinda self-evident. The tone difference in OWB compared to the other DLC's was what really made me like it.

For a more substantive appraisal of the Think Tank I might have had to talk to them more. I only talked to Klein and Dala. I never did find out why Dala is obsessed with biological anatomy or whatever that quest was.

Also, apparently you don't have to kill Mobius but I did.

edited 20th Apr '15 10:46:14 PM by Nikkolas

Ulysses will definitely let you know why he's so interested in you and what his deal is. At length. On several occasions throughout LR. The man really loves the sound of his own voice, almost as much as he love symbolism.

And yes, there will be nukes in LR. They are all pointed at roads. This is symbolic, just like everything else Ulysses ever does.

Since you seemed to miss the audio log here's it in full. It also adds some context to to dead money and also Lonesome Road

Ulysses: Not going to talk you out of it. Know what it means to track someone you share history with. Got a meeting of my own.

Christine: That Courier?

Ulysses: Get him to come to me. Got a message for him, like the message he had for me. Make them walk the road west, straight and true, sink their feet in Old World ash. Let storms tear at them. See the Divide. See what happened.

edited 21st Apr '15 3:21:00 AM by thatguythere47

All I'm going to say is make sure you get all the secrets in LR.

onto Lonesome Road.

Hey it's a new ED-E. Or an old ED-E, I guess. It's good to have a companion.

And now I a, finally talking to the other Courier, the one I first heard about twenty-seven bajillion hours ago when I was a fresh-faced little schoolgirl just out of Goodsprings and I was helping the NCR. Remember those days?

Hm, apparently he recognizes my service to the Legion and by so doing strongly implies he was once in service to the Legion. That's interesting and all but I just want to know what your deal is with me, ya jackass.

From the conversation with Ulysses as I entered the High Road I was thinking maybe thE Courier used to work for the NCR, that he/she traveled the Divide back during the First Battle for Hoover Dam and I somehow fucked up things for the Legion and that is why Ulysses is made at me. But then he continued on and it seems more like I was doing all of this before the Battle and my presence led the NCR to the Divide in the first place.

Guy has a weird way of talking sometimes. Like his voice though.

Shit, that Deathclaw I met on the High Road took off about half my health in one hit. Well I wasn't at full health when he hit me but een still, crazy damage. Luckily the LAER eeems to tear through it pretty fast. Just keep backing up backing up backing up and firing like crazy.

And then holy shit there's another one! Yeah, two shots and I'm dead. The fuck, they are even worse than in 3. I didn't believe it but damn. I suddenly wish I had a mountain of Microfusion Cells... I thought 100 would be enough but maybe not. I have confirmed 4 shots with the Guass will kill them but that's 20 MF Cells. Thank god for ED-E though, he took one for teh team and let me get in a couple shots on the damned thing.

So I had some sort of device on me and accidentally nuked everyone? That's...kinda odd. Ulysses doesn't seem to know where I got my package from or why i ddi what I did. His "answers" have merely led me to more questions.

Rawr was a pain in the ass. I kept getting him (her? It had Eggs) down to just 100 HP and then I'd get wrecked. Then I remembered these lovely Turbo things I never use. They were perfect for this little encounter. Them and my new Plasma Caster. I love that thing.

NOOOOO, E-DE! I had really come to appreciate and love the little guy.... And to think, it died just so some worthless people in the NCR could live... Well I guess I shouldn't come at it from that perspective. I still wanted to nuke the NCR but it struck me as a bit hypocritical considering what I had just told Ulysses. Me and him had a good talk, one Legionare to another, and I got him to back down. Me and him killed some of those Marked Men. Well, I killed a few then hid while E-DE and he did the rest because I was all out of health and Super Stimpacks. I helped take down the last asshole though! Anyway, my point is, I told him that there was ho honor in killing enemies from a distance like this and he consented. As such, I canceled the launch.

Ulysses was quite the intriguing fellow. I'm still not sure I get what his deal is. I get that what happened in the Divide changed him a lot but is he bitter? Does he hate "me"?

Whatever the case, I'm almost done with NV. I have a shit ton of loot to sell and I'm happy.

Well at least you got the good ending to LR. Did you find enough of the holotapes to ask the Armor Piercing Question?

Ulysses's deal was basically he served for the Legion as a Frumentarius but realized the Legion would fall apart after Caesar's death. He also did not believe the NCR was a good choice as a long term successor to the old world, so he started pondering an alternative. He eventually came across a city in what is now the Divide which for some reason he considered to be what he was looking for. Unfortunately, both the NCR and Legion moved in to try to claim the place...and the player Courier delivered a package which happened to contain the launch codes for some of the underground nukes. The package was somehow activated after it arrived, causing some of the underground nukes to detonate which made the Divide as it is in Lonesome Road.

While it is never specified who or what triggered the device (Ulysses apparently was able to look at it after it was delivered, noting it had symbols of the U.S. and the Enclave on it), Ulysses blamed the Courier for having delivered it. When Ulysses was about to accept delivering the Platinum Chip to the Strip, he noticed the player Courier's name on the list of potential carriers. Realizing the player had not died in the incident at the Divide, wanting to punish the player for the horrible crime of delivering packages but not go against Caesar's order to not kill other couriers, Ulysses refused to deliver the Chip in the hopes the player would die delivering the package.

Honestly, Ulysses's relationship with the player kind of kills his character for me. His underlying motives of trying to find a true successor to the old world make him seem like quite a thoughtful and rational person, but his hatred for the player Courier when nothing indicates the player did anything more than deliver the package somewhat deep-sixes the rationality of his character for me. It's kind of like grudge the Clock King has for the mayor of Gotham in Batman: the Animated Series, except in this case the mayor was not even part of the prosecution against the Clock King's case but some completely unrelated person. You can see some ghost of a strand of logic for the hatred, but the vengeful individual does not seem very rational or stable because of it.

edited 21st Apr '15 12:03:44 PM by zeruel241

From what I understand, Ulysses was first designed to be a follower, like Veronica, or Arcade. The only one who was going to be partial to the Legion, as opposed to Boone, or Cassidy or something. The Legion was also not going to be so blatantly lawful evil, but when that went as it went, Ulysses ended up so.

Lonesome road was ok but not my fave FNV DLC. That one would be old world blues.

While this playthrough was the first time I nuked someplace (Dry Wells), I have never killed Ulysses. I kinda really like him, plus he's useful afterwards.

Ulysses is a whiny jackass who no matter what will complain about whatever it is you do because he doesn't realize that the package that caused the Divide to be created wasn't the Courier's fault, they were just doing their job to deliver it, that it blew up the place wasn't the Courier's doing. Ulysses is also a mouthpiece of Chris "WAAAAAAA I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THE SETTINGS I WORK ON!" Avellone, so no matter what you do, Ulysses complains for awhile.

That seems unfair on a couple levels. For one, Avellone is easily the most respected and outright revered writers I've ever seen in the video game industry. Before this thread, I didn't know anyone hated him because every video game he's ever written has had the highest praise. (for the writing. Obsidian isn't so good at other things but that isn't Chris' department) I've been advised after I finish NV to play Planescape: Torment or Alpha Protocol. The former I've encountered nothing but 100% universal praise as one of the best written games in history.

Second, Ulysses has a point, as did all the people in Dead Money The Courier kinda just bumbles about, going hither and thither, with very little thought of the consequences. Sure everything works out but that's not really the Courier's doing, it's sheer dumb luck.

edited 21st Apr '15 5:07:14 PM by Nikkolas

You know I'm always torn between nuking the Legion or canceling the launch altogether.

On the one hand, fuck the Legion and anything that will help hurry their demise is good. But on the other, is the collateral damage worth it considering the NCR will sweep them aside in due time?

I'm sure he's a great writer on original settings, but with games that are just being licensed to Obsidian that Avellone writes on, he finds everything he doesn't like about the series and then uses mouthpieces to bitch about it. Kreia from SWKOTOR2 was Avellone's mouthpiece to complain about everything he didn't like about Star Wars.

In Fallout: New Vegas, Ulysses is one of his mouthpieces and Avellone has gone on record to say that he wants to nuke everything and reset the series, despite that betraying the glass half-full setting of Fallout. If it wasn't for J.E. Sawyer, then Avellone would have gotten his wish and I will forever be grateful Sawyer stopped him.

edited 21st Apr '15 7:52:40 PM by DamascaRamza

The main reason people get mad at him on the subject of Fallout is that he seems to be upset that Fallout has advanced past its Mad Max-esque beginnings into a setting with flourishing post-post-apocalyptic societies and expressed interest in basically nuking everything straight back to Fallout 1, which would basically render Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout New Vegas all moot.

edited 21st Apr '15 7:42:49 PM by Balmung

How due a time? It depends partly on your decisions in the end. If the Mojave remains independent or falls to the Legion, the NCR is going to have to lick its wounds before it can come back. If the Mojave is independent, it acts as a buffer state and the NCR has to deal with the towns before it can attack the Legion from anywhere but Baja.

Nuking the Legion might be beneficial to everyone else. We know from the backstory that the radiation would die back to survivable levels within a century. 80 years, tops, given that FO 1 took place about 70 or 80 years after the bombs first dropped.

So you drop the bombs, and the Legion suffers from the fallout. The Mojave recovers, and the Legion, which will fall apart anyway, is too devastated to come back and threaten the rest of the world before the NCR and Midwest Brotherhood both come in and split the land. Either of those would help rebuild it, if only for their own reasons.

edited 21st Apr '15 7:44:15 PM by Journeyman

But Kreia was the best character in either KOTOR game. In fact she's often said to be one of the best-written females in any video game. I know because I found a topic like that once then did it on several other forums and Kreia's name came up repeatedly in all of them.

Talking to Kreia was the highlight of The Sith Lords for me. She's not there to hate on SW, but to make things less cartoonishly simple than how they used to be. It doesn't have to just be LIGHT GOOD DARK BAD, it could be more complex and interesting. The Force is a great concept that doesn't need to be so simplistic and Kreia exists to give us a more insightful theory on it.

edited 21st Apr '15 7:59:48 PM by Nikkolas

That's the problem. A lot of Star Wars fans, including the majority of the writers in Legends continuity, actively PROTECT the Black-and-White Morality of the setting. They don't want fucking Gray, they want good to be good, and bad to be bad.

Why do you think every time some good person falls to the Dark Side it gets shoved off on some artifact or another? It's because the writers don't want the good characters to actually have a reason of their own to fall.

I really like Ulysses. He mentioned that he was the one who found the hoover dam right? It's kinda clear to see how a man already obsessed with symbolism and history came to believe he was responsible for all the death because he delivered that message to Caesar. He sees himself in you and it makes him angry.

Also I can't believe you turned down a chance at mass murder; you're going soft on us.

Nik has always been TALKED INTO mass murder. This time he wasn't.

ETA: Okay, no. This time he talked himself OUT of it.

edited 21st Apr '15 8:53:40 PM by Journeyman

This game is freezing on me an awful lot in this quest and it's pissing me off. I just finished nuking the stupid NCR President and was fighting my way out hen it randomly froze while I was killing some NCR Ranger with Old Glory. What bullshit, now I gotta do it all again.

Eventually I decided it wasn't very Legion of me to nuke him. Plus that option seemed to keep getting me killed very fast. I thought about it and decided on what to do. I had this awesome unique Machete I got as a reward for helping the Legion outpost at Nelson. The name of the weapon? "Liberator." A fitting tool to take down the inept and worthless president and free the Mojave from his impending disastrous rule.

Lanius isn't quite what I expected. Well, he kinda is and he kinda isn't. He's very articulate at least. I just wish I had gotten more time to converse with him and to get to know his character.

I kinda wish I hadn't lost the Courier's Duster. I used it to get Ulysses' up to full Condition. I mean, all the Courier's Duster did was give me +1 Strength and I have 10 Strength already. I did this before I was informed each Courier Duster has a different symbol on it depending on your allegiance. That sounds cool. Still, I really like Ulysses' outfit and I'm wearing both it and his mask as I charge through the Profligates, oneshotting them all with Old Glory. What was it Vulpes once said? "They are weak, we are strong, this much is known already." Indeed.

I killed the general. This is a battle and he is an officer. Death is the only outcome, whether it comes now or later. He should be glad I killed him honestly. There are much slower and more painful ways to die than to get your head caved in. Well, I didn't even kill him. I was picking off the Heavy Troopers and intending to save him for last but ED-E or Cass got to him first.

All in all, it was a glorious battle.

Now...so many ending slides.

Thoughts on said ending slides:

First off, tHE things the "wah wah wah, LEGION BAD, CAESAR BAD" people didn't mention.

1. Many of the Khans were happy to be integrated into the Legion.

2. Not all people were enslaved and it was specifically pointed out those that weren't lived "peacefully." Now, I don't know what definition of "peacefully" you use but mine doesn't involve being killed or raped all the time or being forced into military service. Which basically means that this ending slide confirms exactly what JE Sawyer said. There are Legion lands with just plain old citizens.

3. Caesar left the Boomers alone. Shame that.

4. He let the Followers leave.

5. Related to Point 2, he let Primm continue doing its own thing.

Now...onto other things.

The Fiends were working with the legion? I don't remember that.

Also don't know anything about the Vault Fiends the one slide mentioned.

Cass doesn't seem happy.... I wonder what happened between her and the Courier. I guess they parted ways but it doesn't really say.

All in all, things are looking good for the Mojave and the Legion. Rome will be established, there will be peace and a job well done, Courier. I'd like to see that golden coin with my face on it.

edited 22nd Apr '15 2:54:56 AM by Nikkolas

And a few months later Caesar dies in his bed and it ALL falls apart.

Yeah he was supporting the fiends to weaken the NCR's hold on the region. He was also doing something with the van graffs but I don't think they ever say what exactly.

For all his talk of honor and shite basically all the NCR quests are discovering legion conspiracies. Considering how tiny the legion is I can't really blame them for trying to even out the playing field.

And once again you seem really happy about supporting rapist slavers. I'm not even sure how much of it is rp and it's a little concerning if I'm being honest.

Yep, Rome will be established, ushering in a new era of rapid expansion, followed by epic decadence, rampant political assassination, splitting into successor states, and eventually getting conquered by people following a different religion. We've already got step one down, Caesar shows signs of hypocritical decadence, and the power struggle after he dies will likely involve enough assassination to make the Byzantine Emperors blush. The end result will likely greatly shrink the Legion and likely lead to a mess of smaller states all claiming to be the true Legion. Then someone with their shit more together comes by and conquers Vegas from their warring mess.

The different Courier Dusters have the Two-Headed Bear (NCR), Old World Flag (House) (same as Ulysses', I believe), Vault 21 Blackjack (Independent/Wild Card), and the Legion Bull (Legion) on the back, as well as different stat boosts.

edited 22nd Apr '15 3:48:08 AM by Balmung